The entire attending group of Team Outphase is almost undefeated here today and they’re all running variations on a basic theme that we’ve seen before. The goal? Remove monsters from play with Bazoo the Soul-Eater, and bring them back with Dimension Fusion. Nothing new there at the core level. However, like so many other duelists this weekend, the whole thing hinges on Card Trooper.

Monsters: 21

3 Cyber Dragon

1 Spirit Reaper

3 Card Trooper

3 Cyber Phoenix

3 Bazoo the Soul-Eater

3 Snipe Hunter

1 Jinzo

1 Morphing Jar

1 Dark Magician of Chaos

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

1 Magician of Faith

Spells: 14

3 Dimension Fusion

1 Scapegoat

2 Overload Fusion

1 Premature Burial

1 Giant Trunade

1 Graceful Charity

1 Limiter Removal

1 Card Destruction

1 Heavy Storm

1 Swords of Revealing Light

1 Future Fusion

Traps: 5

1 Mirror Force

1 Torrential Tribute

1 Call of the Haunted

The deck has two different ways to set up a win with Dimension Fusion. The first is Card Trooper. With more monsters than spells and traps combined, the deck maintains its capability to get monsters into the graveyard with Card Trooper well into a duel. Just load the graveyard with Trooper, remove cards from play with Bazoo, and then activate Dimension Fusion for the win. Alternatively, it also takes advantage of Card Trooper’s Machine-type status by skewing very heavily towards Machines, and then running a miniature Chimeratech engine: one Future Fusion and two Overload Fusion.

The cool part is the deck’s crossover potential between the two strategies. Future Fusion can load the graveyard for Bazoo the Soul-Eater just as easily as it can for Overload. Dimension Fusion covers for a failed Chimeratech Overdragon, which means this deck can afford to extend with Overload a lot faster than more dedicated strategies. The ability to Dimension Fusion for Card Trooper and Bazoo, grind away cards with the Trooper, and then feed them to the monkey, has created some really spectacular plays here today. The fact that all of these monsters are good on their own is almost irrelevant to the central game-plan.

Of course, the individual impact of some of the monsters being used here has been noteworthy as well. Outphase has been attacking over Monarchs with Bazoo all day long, and Card Trooper’s destruction effect is just another factor that lets them play aggressively without fearing the usual repercussions of over-extension. If you read Chris Bowling’s feature match from earlier you saw one of the deck’s more impressive tricks: bringing back Trooper with Call of the Haunted and then activating Giant Trunade. Call bounces to be used again later, Card Trooper is destroyed, and the Outphase player gets to draw a card. That instantly balances out the use of Giant Trunade, since you give up the Trunade, but gain a card from Trooper in the process. Tricky stuff.

Cyber Phoenix is another handy card that helps the deck play aggressively. In both Spicer and Bowling’s feature matches we saw them play out of bad situations by summoning Phoenix or Card Trooper just to get more draws and help dig for their outs. The ability to fend off Sakuretsu Armor is also incredibly valuable to this deck’s fast tempo.

Three Snipe Hunter in a combo deck is starting to become a staple-worthy inclusion. This deck has almost fifteen cards that will be dead draws a good percentage of the time, so Snipe Hunter turns those useless options into flexible Card Destruction. Expect this to be a trend that will continue well into the next format.

This deck blows clean through Gadgets if given the chance, presenting monsters that are difficult to rationalize removing with effects, while also holding the threat of Chimeratech Overdragon or a flood of Dimension Fusion’d monsters that the Gadget player simply can’t stop due to the sheer volume of attackers. Monarchs can certainly get an edge by discarding pieces of the combo, but the deck can buy time with all of its slow-tempo draw monsters. It’s becoming very clear this weekend why Dimension Fusion needed to be limited to one per deck. The ability to gain so much more card presence than the opponent, and immediately leverage it into field presence, is just too good.